In the test 15 years ago: Asus & apos; first unsuccessful cooler

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The Silent Square Pro (test) not only had an interesting look, but was also Asus & apos; first unsuccessful cooler after initial failures like the Star Ice (test). The orange Silent Square Pro couldn't keep up with the inexpensive and consistently excellent competition from Scythe.

Table of contents

  1. 1 An unusual design
  2. A loud cooler with mediocre performance
  3. Conclusion

An unusual design

The Silent Square Pro had an interesting design that earned it the title “Cool Orange” 15 years ago thanks to the color scheme. The cooler had dimensions of 120 × 105 × 140 mm with a weight of 820 g. This put the Silent Square Pro on the heavier side of the models at the time. The waste heat was dissipated via five 6 mm heat pipes to the two cooling towers, each with 35 aluminum fins. A special feature was found in the built-in fan, which was mounted enclosed between the two cooling towers and covered on both sides by metal covers. Asus made the fan replacement extremely difficult because the metal covers were attached with special screws. The speed of the supplied fan was comparatively high at 2,500 rpm, which also had a negative effect on the volume. To prevent this, Asus included a 3.5-inch fan control that allowed the fan voltage to be continuously regulated between 5 and 12 volts.

  1. Complete scope of delivery

Image 1 of 11

Complete scope of delivery
Silent Square Pro
Orange fan cover
5-way heat pipe
high-quality finish, good material quality
3,5 & quot; Fan control with display
Central 92 mm fan with holding frame
Loud Sunon fans as standard setup
Dualeba -Hybrid-Tower
No incompatibilities with Silent-Square Pro

Asus couldn't shine with the Silent Square Pro during assembly. Due to the necessary backplate, the mainboard had to be removed in any case, even though Asus advertised the “simple assembly in three steps even without removing the mainboard” on its own website. The large number of small parts that were necessary for the installation of the cooler did the rest.

A loud cooler with mediocre performance

In terms of cooling performance, the Silent Square Pro placed in the middle of the field. With the standard fan at full speed, the temperature of the Pentium 840 Extreme Edition used was 66 ° C and thus one Kelvin behind a Scythe Infinity at 562 rpm. The generated sound pressure level was 50.1 dB (A) and thus almost 20 dB (A) more than with the Scythe Infinity. When the speed was reduced to 1,176 rpm, the volume of the Asus cooler dropped to 34.1 dB (A) and the CPU temperature rose to 74 ° C at the same time. Accordingly, the Silent Square Pro cooled louder than the throttled Scythe Infinity even at reduced speed and was a full nine Kelvin worse.

CPU cooler in performance comparison Unit: ° C

  • Zalman CNPS 9700 LED [series 2584 rpm]:
    • load temperatures59.0
    • Idle temperatures40.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 54.1
  • Scythe Infinity [Series 1121 rpm]:
    • load temperatures62.0
    • idle temperatures40.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 36.5
  • Scythe Ninja [Coolink 1556 rpm]:
    • load temperatures63.0
    • idle temperatures40.0
    • volume in dB (A ) 44.2
  • Scythe Infinity [Series 565 rpm]:
    • load temperatures65.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.4
  • Scythe Ninja [Pope 1187 rpm]:
    • load temperatures66.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • volume in dB (A ) 36.7
  • Thermalright SI-128 [Coolink 1532 rpm]:
    • load temperatures66.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 44.1
  • Asus Silent-Square Pro [Series 2369 rpm ]:
    • load temperatures66.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 50.1
  • Zalman CNPS 9700 LED [series 1264 rpm]:
    • load temperatures66.0
    • Idle temperatures43.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 34.6
  • Scythe Ninja [ Pope 542 rpm]:
    • load temperatures68.0
    • idle temperatures43.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.8
  • Scythe Mine [Pope 1175 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures69.0
    • Idle temperatures43.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 36.9
  • Thermalright SI-120 [Coolink 1532 rpm]:
    • load temperatures70.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 44.1
  • Zalman CNPS 9500 LED [2451 rpm]:
    • load temperatures70.0
    • idle temperatures41.0
    • volume in dB (A) 52.9
  • Thermalright SI-128 [Pope 1145 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures70.0
    • Idle temperatures42.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 36.6
  • Scythe Mine [Series 1358 rpm]:
    • load temperatures70.0
    • idle temperatures45.0
    • volume in dB (A ) 39.4
  • Thermalright Ultra-90 [Pope N2GL 1699 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures70.0
    • Idle temperatures45.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 42.2
  • Zalman CNPS 9500 LED [1365 Rpm]:
    • load temperatures72.0
    • idle temperatures44.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 36.2
  • Thermalright Ultra-90 [Pope N2GLLE 1035 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures73.0
    • Idle temperatures46.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 34.5
  • Thermalright SI-120 [Pope 1145 rpm]:
    • load temperatures74.0
    • idle temperatures43.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 36.6
  • Asus Silent-Square Pro [Series 1176 U/min]:
    • Load temperatures74.0
    • Idle temperatures44.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 34.1
  • Scythe Mine [Pope 531 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures75.0
    • Idle temperatures47.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 31.0
  • Thermalright SI-128 [Pope 496 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures76.0
    • Idle temperatures45.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.7
  • Thermalright Ultra-90 [Papst N2GL 525 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures76.0
    • Idle temperatures47.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.8
  • Intel Boxed without PWM [2325 rpm]:
    • load temperatures77.0
    • idle temperatures46.0
    • volume in dB (A) 49.5
  • Scythe Mine [Series 662 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures77.0
    • Idle temperatures47.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.9
  • Thermalright SI-120 [Pope 496 rpm]:
    • load temperatures78.0
    • idle temperatures47.0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.7
  • Intel Boxed without PWM [1604 rpm]:
    • load temperatures84.0
    • idle temperatures50.0
    • volume in dB (A) 37.9
  • Thermalright Ultra-90 [Papst N2GLLE 265 rpm]:
    • Load temperatures91.0 Thermal throttling
    • Idle temperatures55, 0
    • Volume in dB (A) 30.5

Conclusion

The name Silent Square Pro was very poorly chosen in view of the high volume of the cooler. Nevertheless, the cooler was the first from Asus that hadn't completely failed. For a price of just over 40 euros, the cooling performance, installation or other qualities of the Silent Square Pro could not convince – especially considering the competition in the form of the Scythe Infinity for less than 40 euros. All in all, the Silent Square Pro was a step in the right direction after the disastrous Star Ice, but it was too mediocre to actually be recommended.

In the “Test 15 years ago” category, the editorial team has been looking into the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

  • Potent cool orange from the Far East
  • The Scythe Infinity did away with other CPU coolers
  • Thermalright's first Ultra-90 tower cooler
  • 125 ° C were still ok with the GeForce 7950 GT from XFX
  • Zalman made a comeback with the CNPS 9700 LED
  • The Scythe Mine Cooler was a lot cooler for little money
  • The GeForce 7900 GS was a cheaper 7900 GT
  • Intel's Core 2 Extreme pushed multi-GPU setups to the limit

    • < li> ATi's Radeon X1950 XTX was a top model for 399 euros

  • Thermal Right's SI-128 was good, but not perfect
  • Microsoft WHQL torpedoed Nvidia's Quad-SLI
  • An overclocked GeForce 7600 GS with 512 MByte memory
  • Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 and E6700 cleaned up with AMD
  • The absolute price-performance tip GeForce 7600 GST
  • The Core 2 Extreme X6800 left them all behind
  • The Zalman VF-900 Cu dominated them all
  • Three GeForce 7950 GX2s from loud to fast
  • GeForce Custom -Designs in extra fast and silent
  • The “gamer cube” that only ventilated via the power supply
  • Nvidia's double decker alias GeForce 7950 GX2

Even more content of this kind and many more reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner of the Com forum puterBase.